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For the most part, I try not to use dictionaries when consuming Japanese media. There will of course be times when I don't know a word and it is required for full comprehension, but usually I'll just ask my wife what the word means and she'll explain it to me in Japanese.

Probably about half and half. There's lots of vocabulary that you never encounter in day-to-day life, so those you would have to study beforehand, but living in Japan made all the grammar and listening parts pretty easy, for example.

I took it about a year ago. Overall, it's basically just a vocabulary exam (similar to how Japanese people study English), with plenty of random complicated political words that even my girlfriend, who is Japanese, didn't understand. There's also lots of red herrings in the text and questions with more than one right answer, so you have to guess what the exam-maker thinks is more right.

Nah, even when I was an exchange student and taking Japanese courses I pretty much just slacked off the whole time and did my own thing. So I'd say it's been a mix of reading so many visual novels and such over the years, and more recently the immersion aspect of working in Japan and being forced to speak mostly Japanese.

I'm super interested now in progressing with a third language, Korean, but alas, time is limited...

Hey yoooo

I almost rejected you because I thought was another random fr

Nowadays, completely raw. I don't know if I've used a text hooker for a year or two now. If there's a word I don't know I just type the kanji into a dictionary. But it's quite rare that I need to do so unless I'm reading something complex and it uses irregular vocabulary. For just your regular ol' game or visual novel, I might not need to use a dictionary at all.

Really? I keep putting it off since some people say it's ungodly difficult (including my Japanese girlfriend), but I've never really looked at it myself. Plus, since I've spoken (in person) literally only Japanese for most of the year, perhaps it wouldn't be too difficult.

Saihate is challenging lexically, with tons of words you will probably have never seen elsewhere. The grammar is just standard Japanese, though, so if you have a dictionary like TA and can handle long-winded descriptive scenes then you shouldn't have much issue. It's easier than Muramasa, but slower, which I guess can more easily lead to fatigue.

Pretty much. A lot of Japanese people are open to chatting with English-speaking online, and especially if you can talk to them in Japanese, since some are a bit nervous about about their English skills. As long as you go on social media sites (i.e. Facebook or Twitter) or message boards, and drop your Line/Skype ID, you'll find at least one person who's interested.

There's also this site if you want something more direct, though I haven't used it myself. I think that might be the easier way to go about it.

Yeah, that sort of elitism is really toxic and detrimental to anyone trying to learn Japanese. Learning words through context (i.e. seeing them fifty times in a variety of games and visual novels) is how you learn them, not bashing yourself against Japanese dictionaries that you can't even understand.

And while maybe your vocabulary acquisition might not be quite as fast as someone grinding Anki cards all day long, you're already learning grammar (and slang) - the most important part of the language - at a rapid speed while they aren't, meaning you have a balanced understanding of Japanese while the Anki lovers only know a bunch of words that are never used.

Mostly just YouTube stuff, yeah. 実況プレイ are the main thing I watch (usually while eating lunch or dinner or something), but there's also vlogs and clips from Japanese TV (バラエティ番組) and all sorts of other things posted on there which can sometimes be interesting. The vocabulary is usually pretty easy - I don't have to look up anything most of the time. Something like LoGH is a different story, though... there's no way I could handle that raw.

I jumped into watching these things pretty early on and with terrible vocabulary. It's good practice, though, even if you don't understand much of the videos at first.

It's not hard. It's definitely slang-y, but if you're used to that sort of thing then you'll have zero problems. Here's a few random lines if you want a sense of what you'll have to deal with:


So most of what you'll encounter doesn't show up in TA. I still have it sitting in the background for when I come across the occasional word I don't know, though. It's just more convenient and time-efficient that way, especially as Oretsuba is 4 MB of text or something crazy like that.

Hm, I read 2ch pretty casually myself. The eroge and anime boards are certainly worth paying attention to since they're essentially the most important communities in their respective medium. I get a bit annoyed with the eroge board, though, since there's a lot of 処女厨 there who raise a stink if their waifu isn't 100% pure.

Other than that, Nicovideo (especially its dictionary side) and EGS reviews are nice, and I'd recommend getting into the habit of Googling random Japanese things that interest you as they can lead to some pretty cool or amusing places. I've had more than a few laughs from the stupid crap on Chiebukuro.

Hmm, VN? You mean light novel?

It's probably a step up from, say, Murakami's stuff or the average moege, but it's fairly generous with the furigana and is restricted to a school setting, so you don't have to learn any crazy terminology. As far as quality goes, well... it hasn't been super impressive, sadly. It feels like typical anime stuff, if that makes sense? Shumon had to tone down his writing to appeal to a younger and more mainstream audience here, which is a bit disappointing. His writing still comes through a little bit in all the metaphors and such, I suppose. Certainly worth reading at any rate. Chizu is cute.

You need to download the AlphaRom crack thing that works for a bunch of games. Just put it in the same folder and drag the game's .exe onto it and it'll work. Same goes for KKK.